Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to speak with Dan Pink on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Pink is the author of six provocative best selling books,
Speaker 1: including his newest When, The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.
Speaker 1: His other books include A Whole New Mind, Drive and
Speaker 1: To Sell as Human. Pink's books have won multiple awards
Speaker 1: and have been translated into thirty eight languages. Hey, nice
Speaker 1: to chat with you today, Dan, Hey Scott, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Boy. You know, we cover a wide range
Speaker 1: of topics in this podcast. You've covered a wide range
Speaker 1: of topics in your own writing. Do you see like
Speaker 1: a core thread that runs through all of them? Not? Really,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, right now, I mean there's certain so
Speaker 1: there's certainly I can guarantee this. There's no intentional designed
Speaker 1: thread it's not like I have some master plan out there.
Speaker 1: Put it mildly, I think that, you know, maybe there
Speaker 1: is a thread that is visible retrospectively. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: something that maybe readers can see more than I. I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's any sort of common dominator, it might be
Speaker 1: that I tend to write a lot about not even exclusively.
Speaker 1: I tend to write a fair amount about work, just
Speaker 1: because I think work is a really interesting domain and
Speaker 1: wish to study what makes us tick. But now just
Speaker 1: making it up as I go along, like everybody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do find that interesting that, Like, I notice
Speaker 1: that I learned things about myself when I read enough
Speaker 1: of my work over a long period of time and
Speaker 1: I look back and I'm like, wow, something emerged here
Speaker 1: from my that actually reveals something about my soul. I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you've noticed anything that kind of you
Speaker 1: like it? Go wow. I really kind of obsessed with
Speaker 1: his X Y, And you know, you know what, I
Speaker 1: am not that introspective. I guess I have not. That's honestly,
Speaker 1: it's not I probably should be more introspective. It's not
Speaker 1: anything that I have really considered. Maybe it's worth doing.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, it's not a requirement. Yeah. So let's start
Speaker 1: with your book Drive. Lots of meat in there that
Speaker 1: has areas of mutual interest. Can you start with the
Speaker 1: outdated notion of motivation that shall we say motivated to
Speaker 1: you to write Drive in the first place. Yeah. What's
Speaker 1: interesting about this stuff in that book, which is, as
Speaker 1: you know, Scott, is based on you know, about fifty
Speaker 1: years of research in behavioral science, is that there's nuance
Speaker 1: to it. Every once in a while, the nuance gets lost.
Speaker 1: And basically the big idea there is that there's a
Speaker 1: certain kind of motivator that we use in organizations. Psychologists
Speaker 1: like you call it a controlling, contingent motivator. Okay, I
Speaker 1: like to call it an if then reward because if
Speaker 1: you do this, then you get that. If you do this,
Speaker 1: then you get that. Now here's the thing. We use
Speaker 1: all kinds of rewards in organizations, all kinds of rewards,
Speaker 1: but this is in some ways the mainstay rewards. And
Speaker 1: what the research tell us about if then rewards, not
Speaker 1: about all rewards, but about if then rewards in particular,
Speaker 1: is that they're pretty good for simple algorithmic tasks with
Speaker 1: short time horizons. They're less good for more complex tasks
Speaker 1: with longer time horizons. And the problem is that in
Speaker 1: organizations especially, we use them for everything, and so they
Speaker 1: can be effective for very routine short term tasks, but
Speaker 1: they're less effective for tasks with longer time horizons, and
Speaker 1: that they require more conceptual thinking. So we use them
Speaker 1: for everything. When they don't win, and when we don't
Speaker 1: work in the second category, instead of saying, hey, we
Speaker 1: need a new approach, we just say, hey, those carrot
Speaker 1: and stick motivators didn't work. Oh, let's have some more carrots.
Speaker 1: Let's have crunchier carrots. Let's put carrots with honey delays
Speaker 1: on them, or you know, even the sticks. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's have sharper sticks. Let's poke people in the eye
Speaker 1: four times rather than just three times, and it carries
Speaker 1: is done a wrong. Do you mean motivate people by
Speaker 1: saying you only poke them twice instead of three times?
Speaker 1: Is that what you mean? Oh? No, I mean I
Speaker 1: mean really motivating people like oh, because I'll demotivate people
Speaker 1: aren't responding very well because we're only poking them twice
Speaker 1: in the eye. Let's put them let's say, let's put
Speaker 1: them three times in each eye for a total of
Speaker 1: six and that'll really get them to Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: just a little bit outdated. But again, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there is nuance here. And so sometimes people say, oh,
Speaker 1: human beings are so noble they don't respond to rewards,
Speaker 1: which is nonsense. It's almost as much as nonsense as
Speaker 1: people who say human beings respond only to contingent rewards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love how you put this nuance in there,
Speaker 1: and you certainly don't say that in the workplace we
Speaker 1: should completely eliminate external rewards. That it's also also it's
Speaker 1: not only external internal, it's basically non contingent. And so
Speaker 1: what extra reward is like salary, It's like, yeah, should
Speaker 1: people be paid salary? Yeah, people should be paid a
Speaker 1: high salary. Like there's a very good there's a very
Speaker 1: good argument rooted in psychological science even economic science, on
Speaker 1: the importance of paying people healthy salaries. You can make
Speaker 1: the psychological argument, but you can also make an economic
Speaker 1: argument that if you pay people, I mean, georgeja Koloff
Speaker 1: made this argument, you know, if you pay people more
Speaker 1: than the market, Like there's a think where we've got
Speaker 1: a market clearing wage, right, so we know that there's
Speaker 1: a certain range. Like I'm in Washington, DC. So let's
Speaker 1: say I'm at an insurance company. I want to hire
Speaker 1: a corporate auditor with six years of experience. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a salary range there. And what George
Speaker 1: Akerloff said in some of his research is that hey
Speaker 1: pay people a little bit outside of that range, higher
Speaker 1: than that range. It's like, why would you ever do that?
Speaker 1: And it turns out that what it does well, first
Speaker 1: of all, it raises the opportunity cost of quitting. Second
Speaker 1: of all, it basically eliminates all grievances about fairness and
Speaker 1: so people can just focus on the work. So, yes,
Speaker 1: pay people well, pay people well. But this idea that
Speaker 1: you can constantly calibrate and manipulate people with these contingent
Speaker 1: rewards is just as a complete fallacy. I want to
Speaker 1: bring up something that not many people a familiar with
Speaker 1: this idea. I've really digged into the writings of Abraham Masel, who,
Speaker 1: as you know, was a seminal, motivational researcher and theorist.
Speaker 1: He had this idea of meta pay, so he argued
Speaker 1: that self actualized people shouldn't be paid in what other
Speaker 1: people are so concerned of people who well er in
Speaker 1: the hierarchy, but those who are kind of higher and
Speaker 1: more self actualized, they get more excited by the reward
Speaker 1: of virtue or the reward of like feeling like they've
Speaker 1: done something good. And he actually made the case that like,
Speaker 1: if we pay self actualized people metapay and we pay
Speaker 1: the other workers more with actual money that people care
Speaker 1: about the money, then they'll be less likely to resent
Speaker 1: the people who are self actualized. It's actually kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting argument about human nature. It is an interesting argument. Now,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting, and you know, as you know it
Speaker 1: being a Maslow expert, I mean it's really you know,
Speaker 1: Maslow didn't do that all that many experiments and did
Speaker 1: a lot of theorizing. And this is a fascinating theoretical concept.
Speaker 1: I think you could run you could run a ground
Speaker 1: the other way, and that if you if like let's
Speaker 1: say it's you and I and I'm getting very high
Speaker 1: metapay and you're getting a lot of money pay. If
Speaker 1: you're getting more money pay than I am, problem with
Speaker 1: people will get jealous of right, it's because because of fairness,
Speaker 1: because of you know, the human beings are just exquisitely
Speaker 1: attuned to this norm of fairness. It's an interesting idea,
Speaker 1: and it's actually adjacent to some of the other ideas here,
Speaker 1: which is that, you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: we do know from a lot of research is that
Speaker 1: purpose is a pretty powerful motivator and and maybe purpose
Speaker 1: is maybe purpose and metapay are sibilis, yes, yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's totally totally so purpose and metapay. And so we
Speaker 1: know from a lot of research that you know that
Speaker 1: fundraisers will work a little harder if they get to
Speaker 1: meet the people who benefit from their fundraising. For instance,
Speaker 1: we know it's a great lovely piece of research out
Speaker 1: of Harvard Business School from a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: where they had cooks in a cafeteria. You know this
Speaker 1: research that cooks in a cafeteria that usually could not
Speaker 1: see the customers, and if you rig up and they
Speaker 1: rigged up an iPad in the cafeteria line so that
Speaker 1: the cooks could see the customers. And when they did that,
Speaker 1: they were measuring the dependent variable was the quality of
Speaker 1: the food, not satisfactor or anything like that. And when
Speaker 1: cooks could see the customers, the quality of the food improved.
Speaker 1: That's in some ways that you know, a sibling of Metapay.
Speaker 1: So I think that Maslow, as with many, many many things,
Speaker 1: sort of in his brilliant, fertile mind, was onto something
Speaker 1: that it's the whole thing about. What was that book
Speaker 1: that he wrote. It's very hard to read as a
Speaker 1: very complicated first adjective name, but it's like epigistic beginning
Speaker 1: management or something like that. Yeah, U psychean management psyche
Speaker 1: in management, right, which I found a very hard book
Speaker 1: to read, and yet it contains I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the seeds of much of contemporary management thinking today.
Speaker 1: So that's awesome that you read that. Not many people
Speaker 1: are even aware of that book. Actually pronounced the name,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't think of the name of it. No,
Speaker 1: I'm impressed that you read it. And actually that book
Speaker 1: is actually a collection. It's actually his journals from a
Speaker 1: particular summer he spent observing, and all those things are dictation.
Speaker 1: So if they're hard to understand, it's because he dictated
Speaker 1: things into a tape recorder company. What kind of company
Speaker 1: was I was like electrical it was a management Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like they produced electronics. Yeah that's right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pres electronics. But when he went into you know, he
Speaker 1: didn't plan on really enjoying that job. He wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in management or business beforehand. He thought, oh good, you know,
Speaker 1: this would be an opportunity for me to go out
Speaker 1: west and do my writing on what I'm really interested in,
Speaker 1: you know, which was like religion. And he was at
Speaker 1: that time he was working on peak experiences in religion.
Speaker 1: And then he was like, holy cow, Like, these workers
Speaker 1: are so motivated, you know, they feel such great pride
Speaker 1: for their work, and they were applying his theory of
Speaker 1: self actualization in the workplace, and so he dropped all
Speaker 1: the other work he was doing, and as he writes
Speaker 1: he dictated in New Psychic Management, he says, he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I used to think education was the main
Speaker 1: place where we can learn the most about human nature,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Now I'm convinced it's the workplace. So that
Speaker 1: actually was a shift the summer of nineteen sixty two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go on and on and on. But it's interesting because
Speaker 1: that connects to the first question, because I think one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I'm interested in writing about I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons why I've been drawn to
Speaker 1: writing about work, at least for the first you know,
Speaker 1: several books I've written, is precisely that that. First of all,
Speaker 1: if you think about just how much time people spend
Speaker 1: it work, all right, it's over half of their waking hours, sure,
Speaker 1: And then you think about what goes on, it's everything.
Speaker 1: It is how to group coordinate, how do conflicts emerge,
Speaker 1: how does stuff get done? What do people find what
Speaker 1: tasks are valuable, what do people find valuable? How to
Speaker 1: how are people effective? And it's it's like everything. It's
Speaker 1: like basically what it is to be, you know, not
Speaker 1: fully what it is to be a human, but it
Speaker 1: becomes this scope through which you can look at the
Speaker 1: entire human condition. Yeah, it sounds like you're like learning
Speaker 1: about your own thread throughout the course of this podcast
Speaker 1: as it goes on. Maybe this is an Maybe this
Speaker 1: is a what is it you fish in? You psyche
Speaker 1: and you know the good society, you know, like the
Speaker 1: society self actualized. Maybe this is a psychean podcast. Oh
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I should Actually I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: changing the psychology podcast name, by the way, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: maybe I should call it the U psyche and podcast.
Speaker 1: But no one would call it you psycheic today? How
Speaker 1: about that? If I do that, do I have to
Speaker 1: give you some royalties? Now? For absolutely, like I make
Speaker 1: any money anyway, but if you if you do that,
Speaker 1: the only thing I'll get from your angry text saying
Speaker 1: why the heck did you make me do this? Well
Speaker 1: I do, yeah. No one knows what you psyche and
Speaker 1: means yeah, and no one does except me and you know.
Speaker 1: But let's talk a little bit about this interesting mode
Speaker 1: because I know that you built on the work of
Speaker 1: CC and Ryan, is that right, and you extended it
Speaker 1: in very interesting directions, made it very accessible. So it's
Speaker 1: it's not just the same thing as their model by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination. But there is something I
Speaker 1: want to discuss about their mode. They have this motivational continuum.
Speaker 1: And you're quite right that external versus internal is way
Speaker 1: too simplistic, But they do have this motivational continuum from
Speaker 1: a motivation to external pressures like you said the that
Speaker 1: would be the carrots, to internal pressures. We have interpresses
Speaker 1: like guilts and ego involved and pressures we put ourselves
Speaker 1: at to value and then to full intrinsic Like I
Speaker 1: just find this intrinsically enjoyable. My work is do what
Speaker 1: do you think of that continuum? How much did you
Speaker 1: draw on that in your own book? For me, it
Speaker 1: started to get more complicated when you get to things
Speaker 1: like introjection, which they an idea that they introduce. I
Speaker 1: don't find that as compelling as some of the other things,
Speaker 1: by the way, that came from Carl Rogers, Oh, really
Speaker 1: antic psychologist. Yeah, so I found the introjection less compelling.
Speaker 1: What I found really compelling are these A lot of
Speaker 1: their research, especially even the cross cultural research on autonomy
Speaker 1: as a fundamental attribute of who human beings are, that
Speaker 1: human beings do intrinsic inherently want to be self determined,
Speaker 1: And looking at their research and just thinking of just
Speaker 1: my own interpretation of life, is I really think that
Speaker 1: is the default human condition. I don't think it's the
Speaker 1: it's the condition of every person today by a long shot,
Speaker 1: but I do think it is the default human condition.
Speaker 1: I think it's a powerful way of it's a powerful
Speaker 1: way of understanding. And also I think that their research
Speaker 1: and others showing all the ways these continued rewards can
Speaker 1: go awry is really valuable. But some of the stuff
Speaker 1: I found less introjection being the best example of that
Speaker 1: I found less compelling. Well, let's think that through for
Speaker 1: a second. Isn't it possible? And I know that you
Speaker 1: talk about importance of grit as well, and as part
Speaker 1: of autonomy, is it possible to be really unhealthily autonomous?
Speaker 1: And I think that's why I personally like the introjection
Speaker 1: part of it, because it's like, you know, you could
Speaker 1: be autonomous, but you could be doing the wrong goals.
Speaker 1: It could be purely driven by insecurity and ego. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but you're still autonomous. Yeah, yes, and no, I mean so,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's again where you can get as
Speaker 1: you say, exactly, that's where introjection can come in. So
Speaker 1: the question is, if you are doing things out of
Speaker 1: a sense of guilt or pressure, is that truly self determined?
Speaker 1: And that's good And the answer would be probably not.
Speaker 1: But and I think it's an important question for me.
Speaker 1: There's a certain point when you're writing for a popular audience,
Speaker 1: that is, there are certain kinds of debates within the
Speaker 1: field that I find like really interesting to talk about,
Speaker 1: but that actually, you know, one secret of writing is
Speaker 1: what do you leave out? And to me, that was
Speaker 1: that's in the category of what do you leave out?
Speaker 1: So if someone asked me a question about it's like, heck, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about it. Let's talk about whether feeling guilt,
Speaker 1: you know, whether feeling guilty is actually a form of
Speaker 1: self determination or actually runs a foul of self determination.
Speaker 1: Woo hoo. That's a room empeer for most people. And
Speaker 1: so it's to me, you know, that's worth leading, it's
Speaker 1: worth leading out in that particular context. I thought occurred
Speaker 1: to me as you're saying this, I should probably care
Speaker 1: what I mean by it after I say it. But
Speaker 1: you're kind of like the Stephen King of nonfiction writing.
Speaker 1: You know, he talks a lot and his beautiful book
Speaker 1: on writing, you know how we need he needs to
Speaker 1: kill his darlings. You know, oh yeah, totally totally tell
Speaker 1: the good story. I want to clarify your wrings. Nothing
Speaker 1: about though. No, No, it's horrifying to some people, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: and that I have been as prolific as Stephen King.
Speaker 1: The guy's unbelievable. I was going to say, you probably are. No,
Speaker 1: I was going to say that there's a there's a
Speaker 1: comparison there. You don't think here's the comparison. We both
Speaker 1: have four letter last names, and we both are native
Speaker 1: speakers of English, and that's I think where the comparison ends.
Speaker 1: The pink. He's Stephen King exactly. But yeah, okay, there's
Speaker 1: a reason they call him the King. No, but I
Speaker 1: do think that, and I like Stephen King. I think
Speaker 1: I actually like reading Stephen King. I read a fair
Speaker 1: amount of Stephen King too, in part because I think
Speaker 1: it's I think reading Stephen King is good for any writers,
Speaker 1: even you know, even nonfiction writers, just because of the
Speaker 1: propulsiveness of the way that he write, just like his
Speaker 1: ability to keep things moving forward all the time. It's
Speaker 1: really just breathtaking the way he does that. But at
Speaker 1: the point about killing your darlings, I think it's even
Speaker 1: more important in some ways for certain kinds of nonfiction.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I see in certain
Speaker 1: kinds of nonfiction books is, and I feel the writer's
Speaker 1: pain on this, is that hey, I spent all this time,
Speaker 1: I did this research, and I found this stuff out,
Speaker 1: and so I want to tell you about it. And
Speaker 1: but if it doesn't move the story of the argument forward,
Speaker 1: the reader doesn't care. And so it's like you got
Speaker 1: to you know, as painful as it is, you got
Speaker 1: to leave it out. Yeah, you do, and it is
Speaker 1: very painful. I mean, like I can't do it. I
Speaker 1: leave it all in and then I give it to
Speaker 1: my editor and say, do whatever you want with it.
Speaker 1: Like that I needed, like it's almost a compulsive thing.
Speaker 1: Like it's like I needed to include it all. And
Speaker 1: then at that first stage, first stage, Yeah, the first
Speaker 1: stage you included. You know, first drafts, you try to
Speaker 1: include anything, but you actually have to be I think
Speaker 1: there's a certain ruthlessness is helpful in writing. It's the
Speaker 1: way I look at and as one progresses, you begin
Speaker 1: to develop that kind of ruthlessness to the point now
Speaker 1: where I read over something and I basically I think
Speaker 1: that every sentence, every word has to explain to me
Speaker 1: why I shouldn't kill it. Yeah, and they are. You're
Speaker 1: doing right by the reader. And I think unfortunately a
Speaker 1: lot of books don't always even aspire to that, unless
Speaker 1: sureing I managed to achieve that, but I think a
Speaker 1: lot of books don't aspire to that. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of it's like, oh my god, that's like, okay, I
Speaker 1: really didn't need these two pages just because you did
Speaker 1: the research one afternoon. That's right. Yeah, so I really
Speaker 1: have learned a lot about science writing by reading your work,
Speaker 1: but is extraordinarily difficult for me to switch between these
Speaker 1: radically different modes of thought, from journal scientific writing to
Speaker 1: popular science communication. It's like being what's multiple personality disorder? Yeah,
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorder. Right, it's like, you know, I go
Speaker 1: from this like hyper detail reviewer comments are like at
Speaker 1: the level of granularity that would, you know, make your
Speaker 1: head explode, and they make my head explode, and then
Speaker 1: switching to like where it's like, oh no, I don't
Speaker 1: need include that level of detail, you know, and like
Speaker 1: there is no picky reviewer. I mean, there are certainly
Speaker 1: picky critics, but yeah, of course, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So it's really hard. Oh I can totally
Speaker 1: understand that. And this is the advantage of not having
Speaker 1: those well developed journal writing skills. Yeah, actually that's a
Speaker 1: good point. Yeah, maybe it's a trade off. I don't
Speaker 1: run into that conflict because there's nothing to conflict with. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're more harmonious, integrated human I am, I am. I'm
Speaker 1: actually climbing ladder about to have a peak experience. It's true, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe if I want to get more into science
Speaker 1: writing out suck more in my journal writing now, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just stop doing it. Yeah, well, I enjoy
Speaker 1: it too though, So it's tough when you enjoy multiple
Speaker 1: things that are so different from joint. That's a whole
Speaker 1: other topic of conversation. Let's talk about selling. Can we
Speaker 1: move into that direction right now? You wrote this really
Speaker 1: fascinating book which really laid down, you know, a basic
Speaker 1: truth about humanity is that, you know, pretty much, even
Speaker 1: if superficially looks different, pretty much everything in the world
Speaker 1: today is in some form of selling. And people's jobs,
Speaker 1: you know, and cars depends on how well you can
Speaker 1: move something and move back. So can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about this fundamentally? What do you think
Speaker 1: the fundamental if you had to think in evolutionary terms,
Speaker 1: like you know, other animals, it's not like monkeys are
Speaker 1: selling other monkeys, but they are doing something resembling what
Speaker 1: this drive is. That's interesting. I haven't thought about it
Speaker 1: much across species. It could be something that make humans,
Speaker 1: I mean what in evolutionary terms, you know, our brains
Speaker 1: allow us to do things that other species can't do,
Speaker 1: and one of the biggest ones is collaborate, even though
Speaker 1: other primates obviously can collaborate, but collaborate, but also what
Speaker 1: we also are able to do is collaborate across great distances,
Speaker 1: and that requires at least some capacity to persuade wo
Speaker 1: other people to join your cause. So my hunch is
Speaker 1: that there probably was an evolutionary advantage to people who
Speaker 1: were adept at persuasion and influence. It'd be surprising if
Speaker 1: it didn't. If there wasn't, because the people who weren't
Speaker 1: adept at that probably didn't get others to go along
Speaker 1: with them and protect them and do all those kinds
Speaker 1: of things. It's a really interesting question about other species.
Speaker 1: I haven't really thought much about it. I wonder whether,
Speaker 1: like the collaborative activity and other species is is we
Speaker 1: can consider it selling. I haven't thought about that. It
Speaker 1: probably isn't. It probably is in some ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's wooing obviously in species for reproduction. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just don't know enough about it. This is one
Speaker 1: book that I have that I haven't finished. Yeah, back
Speaker 1: here somewhere. It's You Have a Million Books behind You
Speaker 1: by Franz de All, who's Emirates climatologist. It's called are
Speaker 1: we smart enough to know how smart animals are? And
Speaker 1: it makes me curious about that. I don't know a
Speaker 1: lot about animal thinking. Well, that's a really good point
Speaker 1: that he made, and I certainly don't know the answer,
Speaker 1: but just in thinking about it, it it seems like it's
Speaker 1: more linked to the Macavelian system we see in monkeys,
Speaker 1: which are is quite developed. You know, it's funny because
Speaker 1: you use the word cooperative, you know, sometimes that's antithetical too,
Speaker 1: like do you distinguish between like dark triad selling and
Speaker 1: cooperative like non zero sum selling? Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: I don't even know. Yeah, no, I see where No,
Speaker 1: I see where you're going. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: arguments of the book, so I would say that dark
Speaker 1: triad selling is a form of manipulation, exactly right, And
Speaker 1: whereas I think, and one of the arguments of the
Speaker 1: book is that that kind of selling, that that low
Speaker 1: road kind of selling is becoming tougher today because of
Speaker 1: information parody. That is, like taking the low road is
Speaker 1: easy in a world where sellers have huge amounts more
Speaker 1: information than buyers, where buyers don't have any choices, where
Speaker 1: buyers don't have a way to talk back today, not fully,
Speaker 1: but today buyers have a lot more information, a lot
Speaker 1: more choices, and a lot more ways to a lot
Speaker 1: more ways to talk back. So you know what you're
Speaker 1: calling like dark triad selling, you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: machia What else is in the triad, like psy psychopathy.
Speaker 1: Believe me, there's plenty of psychopathy, narcissism, and machiavelism in
Speaker 1: the world. It's just that I actually think in selling
Speaker 1: it's less effective these days. Wow, that would be wonderful
Speaker 1: if a lot of like dark tried people listen to
Speaker 1: this podcast and we're like, Wow, if I just a
Speaker 1: more cooperative I could manipulatively get what I want better
Speaker 1: than you know, that's actually a sneaky way of getting
Speaker 1: them to quality. It would be. It could be the
Speaker 1: light version of the dark triad. But by the way,
Speaker 1: the other thing about it, though, The other thing about
Speaker 1: it is that you have to think about you know,
Speaker 1: you use the word zero sum, and I think that's
Speaker 1: actually a really way to look at it. So are
Speaker 1: the interactions and are these transactions zero s or positive? Some?
Speaker 1: And I do think that that dark triad personalities look
Speaker 1: at encounters of all kinds as zero s winning and
Speaker 1: that people who are more self actualized, to borrow phrase,
Speaker 1: probably look at interactions as more positive some that's right. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: you know if you look at great you know. The
Speaker 1: connection between this and evolution is a great book by
Speaker 1: Bob Wright called Non Zero. I love that. It's grateful, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's all about how like you know, the reason
Speaker 1: we've been able to progress is because we don't think
Speaker 1: of things as zero s. We think of things as
Speaker 1: we think of encounters as positive some you know, like
Speaker 1: this conversation here, it's like, there's not going to be
Speaker 1: at least I hope, not going to be a winner
Speaker 1: or a lose. There is not If I win, you lose,
Speaker 1: If you win, I lose. It's a theoretical positive some
Speaker 1: for you, for me, for the listeners. But if I were,
Speaker 1: if I were a narcissistic Machiavellian psychopath, then I might
Speaker 1: want to use this interview to make me look good
Speaker 1: somehow at your expense. Totally. But of all of the
Speaker 1: personality afflictions that I have, dark Tria, it is not
Speaker 1: up there, you know, I mean, we all got something
Speaker 1: come on, yeah, yeah, it's called being human. I wanted
Speaker 1: to make a point. You know, sometimes in the psychology podcast,
Speaker 1: I don't have fully baked ideas, but I just like
Speaker 1: to try to articulate them on the spot. Sure, So,
Speaker 1: who wins when two people are trying to get at
Speaker 1: the truth they both care deeply about, not their ego
Speaker 1: but the truth. Yeah, one person, the person who is
Speaker 1: better at representing the truth kind of does win in
Speaker 1: a sense. But it shouldn't be attached to the ego.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of times on you I'm just
Speaker 1: going to give example. You know, you see a lot
Speaker 1: of times on YouTube these intellectual debates, and then these
Speaker 1: people will reframe it as like X person dominates Y
Speaker 1: person or X person obliterates you know, and I really
Speaker 1: can't stand that framing. But you see how it's kind
Speaker 1: of like reframed when it really is just like a
Speaker 1: really nice mutual dialogue of two people interested in getting
Speaker 1: it the truth. But sometimes that's reframed. Have you seen
Speaker 1: that too on YouTube? I don't know. I mean, you
Speaker 1: see it very much in political discussions, yes, yes, And
Speaker 1: so you know I think that especially in the press
Speaker 1: coverage of political discussions. So it's like, you know, is
Speaker 1: this legislation a win for the Democrats or a lose
Speaker 1: for a loss for the that kind of stuff. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't be basically like that, taking the ethic of sports
Speaker 1: writing into turning everything into essentially a sports contest. The
Speaker 1: thing about sports is that at least a particular g
Speaker 1: game is a baseball game, is a zero sum contest.
Speaker 1: Somebody wins and somebody loses. The other thing about baseball
Speaker 1: games is that the stakes in importance to humanity is limited,
Speaker 1: so it's fine, whereas like political discussions, you would think
Speaker 1: the stakes to humanity are greater. What a terrific analogy,
Speaker 1: because people really do what the human tribalism need. People
Speaker 1: really do treat their political party like they do a
Speaker 1: baseball team, you know, and like whatever the party person says,
Speaker 1: you know, like no matter how crazy or incorrect, untruthful
Speaker 1: it is, it's like rah rah rah go win. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is the this is the biggest thing going on
Speaker 1: in American politics. And this is this is the work
Speaker 1: of a political some great work done by a political
Speaker 1: scientist at Maryland named Lilliana Mason, who's basically the Herd thesis,
Speaker 1: which I think is very very well supported by a
Speaker 1: whole array of pulling data and others. Is that what's
Speaker 1: happened in this first of all, in this country in particular,
Speaker 1: has been an incredible sorting a guy can't think of.
Speaker 1: They wrote a book called The Big Sort, which is
Speaker 1: why you know people in you know, if you look
Speaker 1: at my ninety if you look at my ninetyges zip code,
Speaker 1: they're going to be a shitload of priuses and no
Speaker 1: catal acts, and in my ninetages zip code, they're going
Speaker 1: to be. Here in Washington, d C. They're going to
Speaker 1: be very very few Trump voters and a lot of
Speaker 1: Hillary voters. They're going to be very few people who
Speaker 1: listen to country music and a lot of people who
Speaker 1: listen to NPR. I'm not saying that's a good thing
Speaker 1: or a bad thing, but it's a thing. And so
Speaker 1: you have this massive sorting by neighborhood, but you also
Speaker 1: have a massive sorting politically so that the you know,
Speaker 1: in the old like the first Republican to be elected
Speaker 1: to the United States Senate was an African American, Edward Brook.
Speaker 1: You used to have Southern conservative, Southern conservatives who were Democrats.
Speaker 1: You don't have that anymore. You used to have people
Speaker 1: like John lindsay, a liberal Republican. You don't have that anymore.
Speaker 1: And so what you have now is you have incredible
Speaker 1: polarization of the parties hinge very much to identity, to
Speaker 1: the point where you have one party which is basically
Speaker 1: a white party and another party that is largely a
Speaker 1: non white party. And when people it's basically one party
Speaker 1: is heavily white and the other party is heavily non white,
Speaker 1: but includes whites who live in urban areas. And so
Speaker 1: what you have there is when your politics have become
Speaker 1: hitched entirely to your identity. Political conversations, political battles become
Speaker 1: purely zero sum, and what's at stake is not only
Speaker 1: winning and losing as in a baseball game, but which
Speaker 1: at stake is your identity itself. And so this is
Speaker 1: why the whole point of politics has become to win.
Speaker 1: And this is why you see so identity, Trump's identity, humanity, identity,
Speaker 1: Trump's smaller things, identity, Trump's ideology, identity, which is why
Speaker 1: you can have a swing, a Republican swing in their
Speaker 1: view of law enforcement or Russia in a flash. Identity,
Speaker 1: Trump's ideology, identity, Trump's issues, identity, Trump's interest ten years ago,
Speaker 1: you had Tom Frank write a book called, What's the
Speaker 1: matter with Kansas? What these people and these people on
Speaker 1: Kansas possibly be doing voting for conservatives? What it was
Speaker 1: against their economic self interest? And you know what they
Speaker 1: didn't say was what's the matter with Northwest Washington, d C?
Speaker 1: Where you have people who are supporting candidates who are
Speaker 1: going to raise their taxes against their self interest. So
Speaker 1: identity Trump's interest, identity Trump's ideology, identity Trump's issues. It's
Speaker 1: all about identity, and it's about winning and losing. And
Speaker 1: that's it. And Mason has this great factoid in there
Speaker 1: where she talks about Republicans, something like seventy percent of
Speaker 1: Republicans believe there's some gun control provision, let's say background
Speaker 1: checks or safety locks. Seventy percent of Republicans believe in
Speaker 1: that when you ask them in a poll. But if
Speaker 1: you ask them, should Congress pass a law to mandate
Speaker 1: safety locks or whatever some kind of thing like that
Speaker 1: that they agree with, the number who support passing a
Speaker 1: law to do that goes down to something like forty
Speaker 1: eight percent because that would be a win for the
Speaker 1: other guy. So identity, identity, identity, identity. It beats interest,
Speaker 1: it beats ideology, it beats issues. That's what's going on
Speaker 1: in this country. You really nailed it there, and even
Speaker 1: this is I'm repeating the pieces of Lily animation, but
Speaker 1: I've become very convinced about that. Jennifer Richardson at Yale
Speaker 1: has done some interesting research about how that the changing
Speaker 1: demographics of some really really interesting research in psychology about
Speaker 1: how changes in demographics actually make people in experimental settings
Speaker 1: make people more conservative, and not just white people. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's not, as she says, it's not white
Speaker 1: people psychology, it's people in general. So there's some big, big, big, big, big, big,
Speaker 1: big big issues going on. But the biggest thing in
Speaker 1: the country right now is essentially a civil war of identities.
Speaker 1: It's not politics, it's a civil war. It's an identity
Speaker 1: civil war, identity civil war. Well, you know, if we
Speaker 1: take it a deeper level than identity, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know how I got on that dark track, but
Speaker 1: oh no, I mean I love the detours. To me.
Speaker 1: The detours are more exciting than what's on the to
Speaker 1: do list. It's always the for me. At a deeper
Speaker 1: level of identity, though, it seems like people are hitching
Speaker 1: their identity on their ego. There's like something deeper there
Speaker 1: of like, you know, my ego is at stake or
Speaker 1: my self esteem is you know, as opposed to oh
Speaker 1: there some transcendent truth is at stake. See, they have
Speaker 1: very different consequences depending on what you hitch. You know,
Speaker 1: the identity on totally right, because I think that identity
Speaker 1: is it's I read the completely identity is hitched ego,
Speaker 1: self esteem, whatever. It's not about any kind of broader
Speaker 1: it's not about any kind of broader truth. Then when
Speaker 1: it's a political battle, you don't want your identity to
Speaker 1: lose because that's a major major, that's a major injury.
Speaker 1: It's an injury. It's an injury and a loss for
Speaker 1: your whole self rather than legislatives anyway, not anyway, Like
Speaker 1: this is really awesome stuff. Dark tryad identity politics. Who
Speaker 1: knows what else is next? No, but this is the interesting,
Speaker 1: This is this is what's interesting. But so let me
Speaker 1: try to do a ninja move here and tie what
Speaker 1: you said into next thing I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about. So you know, you talk about the new
Speaker 1: abcs of attunement, buoyancy, and clarity do you think great politicians,
Speaker 1: you know, not just great ones who are like they
Speaker 1: care about humanity, they are good people as well. They
Speaker 1: incorporate these three things when they try to move large
Speaker 1: segments of their base. Absolutely, yeah, that was good. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. So so atunement is can you
Speaker 1: understand someone else's perspective? Can you get out of your
Speaker 1: own head and see something from someone else's point of view?
Speaker 1: I think that good politicians are able to do that.
Speaker 1: Buoyancy is basically, you know, former resilience. Can you stay
Speaker 1: afloat in an ocean of rejection? You know, really good
Speaker 1: politicians are able to do that. And then clarity is,
Speaker 1: you know, the is you know, not only accessing information
Speaker 1: but curating it, making sense of a welthare of information,
Speaker 1: and then also moving from problem solving to problem finding.
Speaker 1: And I do think that, you know, skilled politicians are
Speaker 1: really pretty good at that, and even the less noble
Speaker 1: politicians are pretty good at that. Yeah for sure. And
Speaker 1: then in terms of the extras introversion to mention, I
Speaker 1: really like how you discussed then your book. It's a
Speaker 1: topic I'm interesting as well. Is it a myth that
Speaker 1: you have to be an extrovert in order to have
Speaker 1: these three things or got these three skills. There is
Speaker 1: almost no correlation between strong extroversion and sales success. It's
Speaker 1: a total myth. Thank you for the spelling. That myth
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that strong introverts are better. They're actually not,
Speaker 1: They're worse. So strong introverts aren't very good at this either.
Speaker 1: So what really matters? What really the personality that seems
Speaker 1: to have the greatest success in persuasion, sales influence are
Speaker 1: and proverts, which are most of us, you know a
Speaker 1: little bit. You know, the distribution of introversion extraversion in
Speaker 1: the population is kind of sort of a bell curve,
Speaker 1: and so most of us are not is all Myers
Speaker 1: brings his fault because they said, they said, you know,
Speaker 1: you're an I or an E, when in fact most
Speaker 1: of us it's spectrum, and most of us are someone
Speaker 1: where you know kind of you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a bell curve basically, and so most of us are
Speaker 1: sort of in the middle of that that bel crub.
Speaker 1: So I'm an introvert, like the on any sort of instrument,
Speaker 1: I would test on that if you give you a
Speaker 1: choice between I and E, I mean never forget about
Speaker 1: myers grace, but on the right, on their legitimate Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: On the Big five measure of extraversion, I'm going to
Speaker 1: come out more introverted than extrovert, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to come out as a super strong introvert. And what
Speaker 1: that means is that I'm basically I'm basically an ambrovert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean there's something about that versatility that's actually
Speaker 1: really useful when it comes to sales, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's like being ambidextrous and sports. You know, you can
Speaker 1: move to your left, you can move to your right,
Speaker 1: Whereas being ambidextrous and sales persuasion means that you know
Speaker 1: when to speak up, but you also know when to
Speaker 1: shut up. You don't what to push, but you also
Speaker 1: know when to hold back, And so that kind of
Speaker 1: ambidextrousness is extraordinarily valuable. I couldn't agree with you more
Speaker 1: on that note. So let's next ten minutes or so,
Speaker 1: let's include this podcast talking about time management or no, no,
Speaker 1: not time well, managing your life, and it's it's broader
Speaker 1: than just time management, right, so's scheduling, you know, like
Speaker 1: making timing matter, And this covers a whole wide range
Speaker 1: of things, as you know, could you want to pick
Speaker 1: one of the most obscure things, like one of the
Speaker 1: things people wouldn't necessarily think about, would have such a
Speaker 1: profound effect on one's life if they manage it properly. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there are all kinds of there's all kinds
Speaker 1: ofgory stuff on that. The biggest thing is that is
Speaker 1: that you know when we you know when we think.
Speaker 1: To me, it's like the broader category is like various
Speaker 1: when decisions, right, So when when should you do something?
Speaker 1: And that could be over a course of a lifetime,
Speaker 1: over course of a project, over the course of the day.
Speaker 1: I was really intrigued by a lot of the by
Speaker 1: the research on midpoints, and by the research on endings.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of our a lot of our
Speaker 1: lives are episodic, you know, so a project, for instance,
Speaker 1: as the beginning of middle and an end. Certain kinds
Speaker 1: of jobs have beginnings, middles and ends. Certain relationships have beginnings,
Speaker 1: bills and ends. And the effect of endings on our behavior,
Speaker 1: effect the midpoints on our behavior are really interesting. Midpoints
Speaker 1: is not anything that I even thought about until I
Speaker 1: started doing the research for this book. When so interesting.
Speaker 1: And then well, let's talk about some of the things.
Speaker 1: What about. I mean a lot of things are very practical,
Speaker 1: like when is the worst time to be a hospital? Oh, shot,
Speaker 1: that's an easy one, okay, right, So yeah, So basically,
Speaker 1: don't go to the hospital in the afternoon if you
Speaker 1: can avoid it. And the evidence is pretty overwhelming. If
Speaker 1: you look at like anesthesia rors four times more likely
Speaker 1: at three pm than at nine am. If you look
Speaker 1: at colonoscopies, doctors fund half as many polyups in afternoon
Speaker 1: exams as they do in morning exams. You look at
Speaker 1: prescribing unnecessary antibiotics much more common in the afternoon versus
Speaker 1: the morning. If you look at hand washing in hospitals,
Speaker 1: big decline in hand washing hospitals in the afternoon. So yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's among the findings that have been most useful in
Speaker 1: my own personal life. Husban that So my daughter earlier
Speaker 1: this week had her nineteen year old had her wisdom
Speaker 1: teeth taken out, and believe me, she had to have
Speaker 1: general anesthesia. There is no way that she was going
Speaker 1: for that in the afternoon. She had a live satter
Speaker 1: appointment at seven point thirty pay And I love that
Speaker 1: they are applying your research to help your daughter. Oh,
Speaker 1: totally totally to on that. I mean, I've done it
Speaker 1: in other realms, as I've done it in other realms
Speaker 1: as well, and other kinds of like. I will not,
Speaker 1: I seriously will not. If I get run over by
Speaker 1: a bus at two in the afternoon, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go to the hospital. Okay, I'm not going to say, oh,
Speaker 1: wait till the morning, but if I have discretion over it,
Speaker 1: no way would I go to an important medical appointment
Speaker 1: or the hospital in the afternoon. I'll do a routine
Speaker 1: teeth cleaning in the afternoon, absolutely, you know, go for that.
Speaker 1: But if I'm having a like oral surgery, There's no
Speaker 1: way I'm going to go in the afternoon. This is great,
Speaker 1: ok I'm going to just throw stuff at you and
Speaker 1: just like give me the answer to it, Like just
Speaker 1: give me, like tell me, just give like the one
Speaker 1: word answer. Right. So, like, when should you quit your
Speaker 1: job when you're approaching an anniversary and your job doesn't
Speaker 1: give you both control and challenge more than one word
Speaker 1: one sentence is perfectly fine? When should you get married? Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like your marriage is slightly more likely to
Speaker 1: succeed if you get married after you've completed your education,
Speaker 1: no matter how much education it is. And also between
Speaker 1: the ages of twenty five and thirty two, your marginally
Speaker 1: your marginally less likely to your marginal it's likely to
Speaker 1: get divorced. But again on that, Okay, we're talking about
Speaker 1: large population. So if you get married when you're thirty three,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you're going to get divorced. If you
Speaker 1: get married when you're twenty nine, it doesn't mean you're
Speaker 1: going to You're going to stay married. I think, to me,
Speaker 1: the most interesting piece of research on marriage, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, I mean like marriage is an incredibly
Speaker 1: interesting topic, and Eli Finkol at Northwestern has done a
Speaker 1: terrific book on this called The Marriage. I love that book,
Speaker 1: but one of the really interesting things. But there's some
Speaker 1: research out of Emory showing an inverse relationship between how
Speaker 1: much a couple spends on their wedding ring, engagement ring,
Speaker 1: and wedding and the likelihood success of the marriage succeeding.
Speaker 1: So the more you spend on the wedding, the engagement ring,
Speaker 1: and the wedding, less likely the marriage is to succeed.
Speaker 1: Is that call? Oh, the less likely I was going
Speaker 1: to sa say, if it was more likely, it'd be
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance, but you're saying it's less likely to succeed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the more you spend, the less likely to succeed,
Speaker 1: So expending wedding. Well okay, so why so okay, first
Speaker 1: of all, the opposite. Okay, so this is great. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is great. So you would predict the opposite because
Speaker 1: of course I'm in love with this person. Look how
Speaker 1: much my marriage? How could this be falling apart? We
Speaker 1: had this glorious wedding, right exactly, how could this marriage
Speaker 1: be falling apart? I have this uh sparkly diamond ring.
Speaker 1: That's a great theory. The research shows the opposite. Now, causation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you're scientist. You have to be very very
Speaker 1: skittish about causation if we're outside of a laboratory setting, right,
Speaker 1: even if we're in a laboratory set, and we have
Speaker 1: to be very skittish about causation. But one, okay, so
Speaker 1: I'll give you my initial hypothesis. It was that people
Speaker 1: who spent a lot on weddings and engagement rooms had
Speaker 1: materialistic values, and materialistic values were antithetical to enduring marriages. Okay,
Speaker 1: there needs to be zero evidence of that. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: people have controlled for like materialistic values in this progression.
Speaker 1: There seems to be zero evidence. There is zero evidence
Speaker 1: of that the raining theory right now, and again not
Speaker 1: even it's not even theory, the raining speculation. Yeah yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: it's actually much more pedestrian. And it's this that one
Speaker 1: of the things that we know helps causes marriages to
Speaker 1: break up or at least accelerates marriages breaking up are
Speaker 1: its financial distress. And to be the most persuasive argument
Speaker 1: here is that when couples spend a lot on their
Speaker 1: weddings and a lot of engagement rings, they go into debt,
Speaker 1: and as a consequence, they start their marriages under greater
Speaker 1: financial stress than a marriage where they spent less. And
Speaker 1: so it's really that it's really debt and financial stress
Speaker 1: that's the result of these expensive weddings and engagement rings
Speaker 1: that is driving it. That's very like sensible hypothesis. And
Speaker 1: one could think that you know, you want to start
Speaker 1: your marriage often good foot. If you're starting it off
Speaker 1: broke because you've spent so much in your marriage, it's
Speaker 1: all going to kind of go down here from there.
Speaker 1: You know, there are all kinds of you know, I've
Speaker 1: been married for twenty three years, and so they're all
Speaker 1: kinds of happily married for twenty three years. But there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of stressors unmarried, you know, And one
Speaker 1: of the biggest ones is financial stress. And so if
Speaker 1: you if you go from day one, it's like you're
Speaker 1: underwater from day one. That can you know, up the
Speaker 1: it doesn't guarantee you're going to get divorced. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of financially stressed people who have happy marriages, but
Speaker 1: it could up the odds of one getting divorced. So interesting.
Speaker 1: Just a few more. When should you exercise? It depends
Speaker 1: on your goals. It seems like morning exercises better if
Speaker 1: you want to lose weight, form a habit, or get
Speaker 1: an enduring mood boost. Because I think the last one
Speaker 1: is persuasive, because you know, exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, is
Speaker 1: a mood booster, and it can last for a fairly
Speaker 1: long time. You exercise late in the day, you sleep away.
Speaker 1: The mood boost after an exercise seems to be better
Speaker 1: for avoiding injury. I think that's a lot because a
Speaker 1: body temperature or body temperature goes up later in the
Speaker 1: day and so you're literally more warmed up. It's better
Speaker 1: for performance. There's some interesting effects on long function and
Speaker 1: I coordination and speed at sort of late in the
Speaker 1: afternoon and early in the evening, and people also report
Speaker 1: enjoying it more in the late afternoon and early evening. Again,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: body temperature, So it really depends for morning exercise for
Speaker 1: and during mood boost, habit formation and weight loss, afternoon
Speaker 1: exercise for enjoying it more, performing better in a voiding injury. Cool. Okay,
Speaker 1: last question, and it's a bit of a cheeky framing.
Speaker 1: Are you ready? When is the best time to have
Speaker 1: a midlife crisis? Was that a clever question? Yeah? That
Speaker 1: was That's a really good question. Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: at the midlife crisis, the brainchild of Elliot Jacques in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen sixties is complete bogocity. There's no sort
Speaker 1: of a widespread crisis at middle age. There is something
Speaker 1: very intriguing that goes on across cultures is that there's
Speaker 1: a U shaped curve of wellbeing. So people actually their
Speaker 1: subjective wellbeing is dips a little bit in middle age,
Speaker 1: but no serious crisis. And I'm at in my life now,
Speaker 1: at the bottom of that U shaped curve. Now I'm
Speaker 1: at basically the so everything is up for me from
Speaker 1: now on. Statistically, everything is up for me. Oh does
Speaker 1: that mean like on average? Yeah, so to people in
Speaker 1: my population, cohort on average are going to lift. I
Speaker 1: don't know if how I will. Oh, gotcha, Well I
Speaker 1: hope you will. Hey, thanks a lot for the chat.
Speaker 1: This was a lot of fun, and I've had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun reading your work. Thanks a lot. I
Speaker 1: appreciate the questions and I appreciate the dark alleys you
Speaker 1: walk down with me. I enjoyed it. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at Thespsychology podcast dot com. That's the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a rating and
Speaker 1: review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in
Speaker 1: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.